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Comment by michaelt | Hacker News Reader

Your employer is being audited. An unaccompanied stranger wearing a visitor pass comes up to your desk. He says "Hello I'm the password security auditor, tell me your password so I can make sure it's secure"

Will your company fail the audit if don't hand over the information?

Or will your company fail the audit if if you do hand it over?

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You've clearly never been audited by the federal government.

In the case of the IRS, generally, you must hand over the data they request or you go to jail.

Whether or not it's behind a password protected internal system is irrelevant. Everything is potentially material to any conspiracy to commit tax fraud.

I see no reason why the Federal government itself, which works for us, should not be subject to reciprocal treatment.

Big difference between the IRS and random friends of the President. Congressional Acts is one

Federal government can audit and wiretap citizens, citizens should be able to audit and wiretap the Federal government.

I’d prefer it if random citizens don’t have access to my personal information, that happens to be stored in federal government systems. Especially without any guarantees or regulations around the access.

Bad news, there's a spreadsheet of every Americans SSN, Residential Address, and more widely available with a bit of googling.

It's currently being passed around Lagos on zip drives as we speak, and has been for years.

Good old security by full data disclosure. Are you available for CISO positions by any chance? Your methods are revolutionary

That is unfortunate. The point was refuted so you attack the messenger.

> Good old security by full data disclosure

Your position is any citizen should be able to access the private information of any other citizen? Because that is in essence what "wiretapping the Federal government" would lead to.

Personal privacy aside, how are secrets imperative to national security protected if you allow full audits by any American citizen?

That's not what I said.

Musk is roughly as democratically elected as the average IRS bureaucrat (arguably more so, since the guy auditing you most certainly never appeared on the campaign trail), so I view it as a wash.

Which is a good reason we don't have average IRS bureaucrats behind the resolute desk, right?

I agree as long as all of that flows through the courts, since by law that’s what’s required of the federal government. The FOIA mechanism is the mechanism we have today to audit and wiretap the government although it’s generally quite weak. That’s NOT what’s happening here.

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